May 22, 1974
Page 15985
UNITED NATIONS
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, on May 11, United Nations Secretary General Kurt Waldheim delivered a most perceptive commencement address at the Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C. In his remarks, Waldheim discussed in some detail "the dominant reality of our time – the interdependence of all life on this planet."
In the present era of global scarcities, self-sufficiency is a misguided delusion and interdependence is an inescapable fact. It is becoming increasingly clear to the world's leaders that many of the problems of both the rich and the poor nations are best solved in multilateral efforts through international organizations that benefit all the peoples of the world. Secretary General Waldheim's remarks analyze some of these problems as well as point out some of the opportunities which global resource scarcities have created for meaningful international action.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Secretary General Waldheim's speech be printed in the RECORD.
There being no objection, the speech was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS BY THE SECRETARY-GENERAL OF THE UNITED NATIONS, Mr. KURT WALDHEIM
President Walton, Archbishop Iakovos, Mr. Watson, Your Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen: I am greatly honoured to receive the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Laws from the Catholic University of America, and to be invited to deliver the Commencement Address. I am particularly glad to receive this Degree in the distinguished company of Archbishop Iakovos and Mr. Thomas Watson. The record of Archbishop Iakovos' service to humanity, and particularly in his active involvement in the civil rights movement, in which this University takes such a close interest is an inspiration to all. Mr. Watson has served his country with great distinction in war and peace, and his close and continuing interest in educational matters is one of the many reasons which has prompted the honour he has received today.
The honor which this great University has given me is one which I appreciate personally, but I am grateful also because it is a recognition of the work and achievements of the United Nations. It is a source of deep encouragement to me that the Catholic University of America should wish to renew its public commitment to an organization and to ideals which are deeply rooted in the fundamental verities of the Christian religion.
The United Nations contains many different faiths, ideologies, and beliefs. It embraces all the doctrines and attitudes of mankind, and it was the genius of the Founders to create a Charter to whose principles all nations could freely and willingly subscribe. The words of the Charter, "to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another", have a particular and profound meaning to Christian and non-Christians alike. And the words of Pope Paul VI, in his message for the Day of Peace in 1972, have a universal message: "We believe that the idea of Peace still is, and still must be, dominant in human affairs. It is a necessary idea, an imperative idea, an inspiring idea".
For those who have experienced war and have seen its appalling legacies of fear, suffering, anguish, and hatred, such a statement brings a swift and fervent response. For them, peace is indeed "an inspiring idea", opening new visions of human progress and happiness. It is often more difficult for those who have not had this experience to realize how blessed and fortunate they are.
It is the experience of my generation, which has passed through the grief and tragedy of war, and has spent most of its life in a shadowy hinterland of a precarious and fragile half-peace, that mankind has yet to realize that the establishment of a true and lasting peace requires intense work, vigilance, and application. It is important that we pass on this experience to later generations.
It is now thirty years since the first positive steps were taken in this city, at Dumbarton Oaks, to translate the United Nations concept into a practical reality. It was the creation of a generation which had passed through two world wars, and which knew only too well the consequences of international anarchy. Their intention was to create a new framework for international cooperation, based on the premise of "faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women, and of nations large and small."
In many respects, the objectives of the Founders of the United Nations were very similar to these of the Founding Fathers of the United States. The feeling, in Thomas Paine's words, that "we have it in our power to begin the world over again" was present in Dumbarton Oaks in 1944 and in San Francisco in 1945. So, too, were the precepts of Thomas Jefferson that "all men are created equal," and that man's inalienable rights are "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
But the omens were not wholly propitious. The gulf between ideals and realities was very great. The war had already transformed the balance of power in the world. Large areas of it – particularly in Europe and South-East Asia – were already devastated. Although only very few knew of the awful potentialities of nuclear weapons, two world wars had already killed, maimed, and made homeless tens of millions of people by so-called "conventional" means. In July 1914 a bullet fired in Sarajevo plunged Europe into a war which spread to Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, and which eventually involved the United States of America. In 1939 the invasion of Poland set off another – and even more totally global and terrible – inferno.
As has been rightly said, great conflicts often begin from small events, but never from small causes. The foundations of the events of 1914-1918 and 1939-1945 had been laid long beforehand.
The most potent ingredient of all was a form of nationalism and a concept of national interest which had been relevant for centuries, but which was now fatally outdated. No one, in 1914, had any comprehension of what modern war meant. But even if the statesman of 1914 had realized what lay ahead, they lacked the machinery, and above all, the comprehension, to check the tide that swept them to disaster. Conventional diplomacy had no answer to these new forces. The argument that politicians can be victims of events rather than their controllers had never been more clearly demonstrated.
Tragically, this lesson was not learnt after the First World War. The League of Nations was a nervous half-step in the right direction but few of its Founders placed much faith in its practicality, and most were secretly relieved when the United States refused to join and the Soviet Union was deliberately excluded. Behind the facade of protestations of faith to the ideals of the League, nations pursued their own narrow interests and maintained old enmities.
It is appropriate, at this point, to recall the much misunderstood vision of President Woodrow Wilson: He failed in his task of convincing the European leaders and his own countrymen.
Indeed, it was while he was engaged in this campaign that he was fatally stricken. As the years pass, as we look back on what happened subsequently, we can see better than his contemporaries the true scale of his vision.
It was the combination of vision and realism that created the United Nations. For, if the lessons of 1914 had not been learned by 1919, they had been by 1944. The delegates at Dumbarton Oaks were not attempting to create a perfect world order, only a better one than that which they had inherited, and which had brought mankind to the brink of disaster. This mood of hard realism was not understood by all, and there were those who believed that mankind had devised some magic formula which would swiftly resolve his problems – something called "the United Nations." These people are those who have been most disillusioned, and who tend to blame the continuing problems and difficulties of the world on something called "the United Nations."
The Founders of the United Nations, on the other hand, did not expect human nature or political realities to change suddenly. They did not expect ancient enmities and jealousies to be dramatically resolved. But they grasped what Senator Fulbright has described as "the one great new idea of this century in the field of international affairs." In spite of many difficulties, many setbacks, many disappointments, the organization which they established has survived, has been strengthened, and has become an almost universal community of nations. But, in spite of all these changes, which reflect the series of revolutions through which the world has passed since 1945, the fundamental purposes remain – to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, and to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom. It is within the framework of these objectives that the United Nations has expanded and developed.
The fact is that the United Nations as it has evolved is many things. It is a unique forum for international debate and dialogue; its peacekeeping role is a vital element in the limitation of conflict and the establishment of peace; it is a world-wide intergovernmental diplomatic organization; it has become a global economic, social and humanitarian organization. Today, there is hardly any aspect of human activity in which the United Nations is not, to some extent, involved.
Perhaps most important of all, the United Nations has become a mirror of the hard facts of the world. The United Nations reflects profound political, national, and ideological differences. The United Nations reflects the anguish of the two-thirds of mankind which live in abject poverty.
The United Nations reflects the desperation of those with no education, those with no employment, those with no food and with no hope. The United Nations reflects racial discrimination, denial of basic human rights, injustice, and persecution. The United Nations reflects a world which spends three times the amount of money on armaments than it does on health. If ever the United Nations, now almost a universal organization, ceases to reflect realities, then it will have ceased to have its unique value. For it is only on the basis of true knowledge of the problems of the world that mankind can begin to resolve them.
But if the United Nations reflects much that is tragic, it also reflects much that is good and encouraging in the human spirit. And perhaps the most remarkable of all has been the development of the ideal of international service into a practical reality. There were many at Dumbarton Oaks and San Francisco who were skeptical about the practicality of the concept of men and women from all nations voluntarily serving an international cause, but we have seen in the lives of people like the late Ralph Bunche that it can be, and has been, achieved. We see it today in the selfless dedication of people all over the world working for the United Nations in social and humanitarian relief programmes. We see it in the peacekeeping forces who risk their lives in the quest for peace. We see it in those who work in the United Nations refugee camps, in our health, education, and agricultural programmes, and in the provision of food to those most desperately in need through the World Food Programme.
The United Nations is essentially a great and unique human experiment. As such, it is open to all the human shortcomings and weaknesses. But it is because it is a human organization, served by individual human beings from every continent, that its strength and relevance derives.
I hope that most of you will concern yourselves with public service – not necessarily as a career, but in the other ways open to all citizens. I hope that you will recognize your responsibility to your community, to your state, and to your country. But I also hope that you will recognize your responsibilities as a citizen of this planet. Again I should like to quote from His Holiness the Pope: "Peace is something difficult; indeed very difficult; but it is possible, and it is a duty. That means that much work must be done in order to obtain peace. Peace does not come of itself. It does not stay of itself. It results from great efforts, from great plans. We must desire it, we must deserve it . Peace is everyone's good, and everyone must collaborate to preserve it and make it advance. In some measure each and every one of us can and must collaborate".
For what is the dominant reality of our time, and of the time ahead of us? It is interdependence – the interdependence of all life, and not only human life, on this planet. It is impossible to deal with the great problems which confront the world individually: population, environment, energy, raw materials, natural resources, health, employment, education – each element is interconnected with the others. These are global problems, which require a global response. No nation, however large or powerful, can escape from the fundamental reality of our interdependence. No individual can escape from it. War or the threat of war anywhere affects us all. A trade recession, international monetary instability, inflation, a great natural disaster – any of these, occurring anywhere in the world, to some extent affects us all. International peace and stability are fragile.
Just as in 1914 a single bullet was the catalytic agent that plunged the world into war, so, even more today, can events in far-distant countries affect our daily lives. If the recent Middle East crisis and its aftermath has not reminded us of that fact, then man is not the rational creature whom we like to think he is.
Thus, although you must serve your nation, you must never forget your duty as a world citizen. Nationalism as such is a fine quality, but, as the history of this terrible century so clearly demonstrates, it can degenerate into attitudes which are disastrous for all.
Of all the evils which have beset mankind in its recent history, that of ignorance is perhaps the worst. For out of ignorance there comes intolerance; out of intolerance there comes hostility; and out of hostility there comes conflict. In our interdependent world it is dangerous to be ignorant of other nations, other faiths, other ideologies, other interests, other ambitions, other hopes. From knowledge of these you will learn how it may be possible for the world – your world – "to practice tolerance and live together in peace".
President Walton, ladies and gentlemen. The problems which confront us are so large, so complex, and so profound that many individuals feel an emotion of helplessness. But the record of the United Nations since Dumbarton Oaks has shown that no problem is incapable of solution if – but only if – the nations and the peoples of the world resolve to face them realistically together with determination, understanding, and shared concern. In this task the active involvement of the individual citizen is crucial. So I urge you to involve yourself in public service; to concern yourselves with the realities of the world; and to resolve to play whatever role you feel is most valuable. Above all, never despair, and never give in. And always bear in mind the bitterly-learned experience of my generation – that the alternative to human co-operation and goodwill is human suffering and anguish.
The aim of this great University is "to search out truth scientifically, to safeguard it, and to apply it to the moulding and shaping of both private and public life". I am confident that these beliefs will always dominate your lives, and that you will prove worthy of the trust and faith which we, another generation, place in you.
I thank you for the honor you have given me. I give to each and every one of you my warmest good wishes for the future.